Download PDF | Byzantine Christianity: Emperor, Church and the West, By Harry J. Magoulias (Author), Wayne State University Press, 1982.
210 Pages
Of interest to students of the Middle Ages, of the Byzantine world, of religion, and of art, this book describes the transformation of the Roman Empire from paganism into the Christian state of Byzantium.
In the fourth century, Roman imperial ideology was consciously recast into the official state religion of Christianity. Byzantine Christianity —all-embracing in its wedding of church and state in Christ and one of the most remarkable and unique religious systems in history—was Byzantium’s greatest creative contribution to mankind. Byzantine art became the handmaiden of theology.
This book is directed particularly to college students who have little background in these theological disputes and their profound historical consequences. It describes the development of theological doctrine and the factors leading to the fall and destruction of Constantinople during the Fourth Crusade in 1204.
Harry J. Magoulias is professor of history at Wayne State University. He holds the Ph.D. in history from Harvard University, has been a research fellow at Dumbarton Oaks, and is the translator of Doukas’ Historia Turco-Byzantina, published by Wayne State University Press as Decline and Fall of Byzantium to the Ottoman Turks.
Preface
Byzantine studies in the United States are just now coming into their own. Countless numbers of Americans have never heard of Byzantium, and those who have frequently use the adjective Byzantine to connote intrigue of the worst and most sinister kind. When I went to high school no history teacher ever spoke of Byzantine culture and civilization. Indeed, they seemed to be as ignorant of the Byzantine empire as their students. Perhaps they had read Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, but they were convinced that in an empire of despotic and cruel emperors, corrupt eunuchs, benighted monks and cantankerous theologians forever engaged in abstruse religious controversies much too subtle to be useful, there was nothing that merited serious historical study. Even Byzantine art, with its blatant disregard of the most elementary principles of classical composition and perspective, only confirmed the general estimate of Byzantine civilization. It is now admitted that perhaps no other religious art in history has so well portrayed the miracle of the incarnation of the spiritual and the divine in material form.
In this work I have not tried to enumerate all the major contributions of Byzantium to the course of Western civilization. I have limited myself instead to a survey of Byzantine Christianity, Byzantium’s greatest creative contribution to mankind. The final chapter attempts to show how the fortuitous fusion of opposing religious, political, cultural and economic aims culminated in the destruction, by the Fourth Crusade in 1204, of the Byzantine state, the greatest and most enduring Christian empire the world has known.
In an age suddenly and rudely awakened to the need for ecumenism in political as well as religious affairs there is, I believe, a lesson to be learned from the mistakes and the successes of societies that, although separated from us in time and space, are still akin to twentieth-century society in the crucial problems posed by “alien” ideologies and in the desperate search to find the necessary condi-tions of coexistence. The failure to solve this problem has led, as this text shows, to the murder of some societies.
It is my hope that students of medieval history, political science and theology, as well as those hosts of students in the nation’s colleges of liberal arts, will find something of value here to enable them to better understand the world in which they live.
The extensive quotations of the Byzantine historian Niketas Choniates, as well as the briefer portions of the historian Doukas and the mystics, St. Symeon the New Theologian and Nikolaos Kabasilas, have been translated by me. The sources of all other direct quotes can be found in the bibliography.
Harry J. MAcOovLias
Byzantine Christianity and The Imperial Cult
And thus, by the express appointment of the same God, two roots of blessing, the Roman empire, and the doctrine of Christian piety, sprang up together for the benefit of men. Eusebius of Caesarea, Tridecennial Oration (a.p. 335)
In the fourth century of our era Christian theology was to transform the pagan Roman empire into the Christian state of Byzantium. It was not only that the church was favored by the Emperor, Constantine the Great (324-337), but the imperial ideology itself was consciously Christianized and, consequently, Christianity soon became the official state religion. Byzantine theology, as it evolved, was all-embracing; the state and the church were wedded in Christ. As a result, the imperial cult had its own theology, ritual and iconography. In fact, it formed a close parallel to the divine cult of Christ, and in discussing their respective institutions it is often difficult to tell which came first. In any case, they mutually influenced each other. Therefore, a discussion of the Christian emperor is a must if we are to have an adequate understanding of Byzantine Christianity, one of the most remarkable and unique religious systems in history If one were to ask what was the cornerstone of the Byzantine state, the dominant element that set it apart in world history, the answer would be the role of the Christian emperor. To early and medieval Christians he was the central and harmonizing source of law, order, power and civilized life. Byzantium had no written constitution, and the special fascination of the study of its history is how this complex society adapted itself to ever-changing conditions while remaining in essence unchanged.
But to begin: How does a pagan empire become Christian? Unlike Islam, whose founder created a new society under Allah's law, Christianity emerged in a Greco-Roman world with extremely sophisticated legal, social and cultural institutions. If its political framework was Greek and Roman, its unique religious life was rooted in Palestine. With the conversion of Constantine the Great, the Greco-Roman and Jewish tradition had to be somehow amalgamated, a task successfully undertaken by Constantine’s contemporary, Eusebius.
PRE-CHRISTIAN BACKGROUND
Actually, the Roman emperors assimilated and developed ideas taken from the Hellenistic kings of the Near East, who in turn were influenced by Hellenic and Asiatic concepts. The Egyptians, the Mesopotamians and their successors the Persians had, from ancient times, looked upon the ruler as a father and shepherd to his people. For Homer, the king was a demigod, standing midway between gods and men. The Greeks had deified their heroes also, considering them to be godly men since one of their parents was a god; as demigods they were worshipped, and statues were erected as a part of their cult. Many of them were honored as founders of city-states.
When Alexander the Great conquered Greece, the Near East and parts of India, thereby creating a universal empire, it was natural for him and his successors to combine these ideas and to introduce the deification of the ruler as a political instrument aiming at the unification of such diverse subjects as Greeks, Persians, Syrians, Egyptians and Indians. Alexander was proclaimed by the Greek philosopher Callisthenes as the son of Zeus. Not only did the priest of the oracle of Ammon, god of Cyrene, announce at Siwah that Alexander was Ammon’s son, but as he had been crowned pharaoh in Egypt he was believed by the Egyptians to be the incarnation of Amon-Re, or Horus. If in Persia the king was not a god incarnate he was nonetheless endowed with the radiant spirit of Ahura-Mazda, the supreme God of Light whose indwelling brilliance dazzled ordinary men.
In the autonomous Greek city-states the critical problem was how to find a legal basis for the monarch’s exercise of extraconstitutional authority. As kings the Hellenistic rulers had no such authority, but as gods they had to be obeyed. Thus deification was the answer to the question of how to legalize absolutism. Democracy was feasible in the small, circumscribed, self-sufficient Greek polis, but no form of government other than an absolute monarchy could control vast territories whose populations were so heterogeneous and dissimilar. It was Ptolemy II (273-270 s.c.) who proclaimed himself and his consort Arsinoe gods and demanded worship from his subjects. While the ancient Greeks had declared deserving heroes gods after their death, the Hellenistic monarchs demanded deification in their lifetime. Aristotle, Alexander's teacher, gave support to this practice by claiming that that individual in the state who is incomparably preeminent in virtue and political capacity “should be rated as a god among men.”
Plato’s ideal ruler was the philosopher-king, who would be both an original scientific thinker of the first order and a moral saint whose personal life would set the standard for the rest of society. Succeeding Greek scholars of the Hellenistic period further developed the theory that the king is to his people as the supreme deity is to the world. To them, the king was also the incarnation of the Logos, the divine spirit of universal reason, and consequently had the unique power to become mankind’s benefactor, shepherd, savior, preserver, god-manifest, father. If the king is a god he is also animate law (empsychos nomos), the source of all law in the state. As the animate constitution, the king was the unifying and binding element of the state.
The Stoics also supported the idea that monarchy is the best form of government and that the ideal monarch is he who rules in accordance with the Logos. They believed that such a king would rule in accordance with law for the benefit of all men as common citizens in an ecumenical state.
The Old Testament view of kingship is expressed in the Biblical verse, “I will declare the decree: the Lord hath said unto me, Thou art my Son; this day have I begotten thee” (Ps. 2:7). The king is the “anointed of God” (Christos) and God is his father because the ruler personifies the Jewish nation. The New Testament picture of Christ as the king of all men reflects that view and those held by Jewish and Greco-Roman society at that time. Christ, as the anointed of God, is also god-manifest, savior and shepherd of his flock.
The position of the pagan Roman emperor as first developed by Augustus (27 B.c.-a.v. 14) was also subject to evolution. Because of Julius Caesar’s tragic failure to make himself a monarch, Augustus was compelled to maintain the fiction that he was preserving the Roman republic. His constitution was based on the sovereignty of the Roman people, which was then delegated to two agents, the princeps (Augustus as the first citizen) and the senate. The princeps was constitutionally a magistrate despite the extent of the dictatorial powers and divine honors accorded him. His dignity was for life and was not hereditary. Not only could it be revoked by the senate, he could theoretically be put to death and subjected to a damnatio memoriae, in which case his name would be effaced from all public monuments.
Legally, the princeps’ authority was based on the combination of the several magistracies he held: The imperium, bestowed either by the army by acclamation or by the senate by decree, made him imperator, the supreme commander of the army. Tribunician power, conferred by senatorial decree and confirmed by the assembly of the people in Rome, enabled the princeps to convoke and preside over the senate and to veto its decisions. As censor he could modify the membership of the senate to his liking, and as pontifex maximus he presided over the official cult. Since theoretically the princeps’ power was transmitted to him by the people, he also became the source of law.
Once again deification became an instrument of political expediency. Augustus had the assassinated Julius Caesar proclaimed divine. Tiberius (14-37) did the same for Augustus after his death, and this remained the custom until] Domitian (81-96) assumed the title of lord and god in his own lifetime.
By the third century one disaster after another overtook the Roman empire, and almost by necessity the Augustan principate evolved into a military despotism. Civil wars convulsed the empire, and its once vaunted unity was lost temporarily. Invaders swarmed over the defenseless frontiers along the Rhine, the Danube and the Euphrates. As if this were not enough, plague decimated the empire’s population from seventy to fifty million.
Only a thoroughly militarized state with absolute authority could save the empire. Recovery finally began during the reign of Aurelian (270-275) who was justly called “Restorer of the World” because he defeated the barbarian Germanic tribes along the northern frontiers, recovered Gaul and reconquered the East. Aurelian attributed his victories to the invincible sun-god (Sol Invictus) and erected a temple to this supreme god, the new “lord of the Roman empire.” Sol Invictus, believed to have given military victories to the Roman troops, was now claimed to be the source of the emperor’s authority and his divine protector. Coins were minted with an inscription declaring Aurelian “born lord and god.” The doctrine of the divine right of kings had come into being.
The idea that the emperor had a divine companion (comes) was a traditional element of great importance. Those mortals whom the Greek gods in Homer favored were protected and guided, but the emperors of the third century claimed to have come to power in the first place through the providence of a god. Diocletian (284 305) adopted Zeus as his guardian deity, while Constantine, before his conversion, claimed Apollo.
THE CHRISTIAN EMPEROR
One of the most momentous events in history was the conversion of Constantine to Christianity. Although it has been argued that the Roman empire had to become Christian and some emperor had to be converted, no historical law admits to such a necessity. In the empire of Persia Christian churches were established. There, as in the Roman empire, persecutions provided the same opportunity of increasing rather than diminishing the number of the faithful. Yet no Persian king was ever converted. Without royal favor the Christians remained a small minority, and Persia never became Christian although it turned Muslim as the result of Arab military conquest. Within three to four hundred years after the Christian lands of Syria, Egypt, Palestine and North Africa fell under Muslim domina-tion in the seventh century, Christians had become an insignificant minority once more (merely by social pressure, for persecution was rare in Muslim lands). Moreover, when Constantine chose Christianity the Roman senate, the army, and the vast majority of the population in the western parts of the empire were devoted pagans. To the title Peer of the Apostles (Isapostolos), which the Greek Orthodox Church has bestowed upon him, Constantine had a certain claim, for his career profoundly influenced the history of the church and the future of Christianity.
Obviously, the conversion of the pagan emperor Constantine to Christianity posed a peculiar problem to Christian political theorists. The pagan emperor, as we have seen, was finally regarded as one more deity in the pantheon, but one who ruled under the special auspices of the supreme god. What was to be the role of the Christian emperor in this scheme? Christians worshipped only one God, the supreme ruler of the universe, whose kingdom extended over both heaven and earth. The conversion of the Roman emperor required a new definition of his position and function as the ruler of the state. Only a Christian scholar who had studied the pagan philosophers and who, as a result of personal experience, had valuable insight into political questions could provide this definition. Such a man was Eusebius, the metropolitan bishop of Caesarea in Palestine and a close friend and adviser of Constantine. Fortunately, the oration Eusebius composed on the occasion of Constantine’s thirtieth anniversary as emperor was preserved for therein we find the fullest and most important single statement of the new Christian political theory. By Christianizing pagan political concepts Eusebius created a unique ideology.
The Platonic ideal, the Hellenistic Logos and the Roman comes were all fused with the concept of the Christian God. In the theory of Hellenistic kingship, the ruler was both an imitation of the supreme deity and the incarnation of that deity’s guiding spirit. If the supreme deity was the archetype of the true king, the Logos was the ruler’s necessary guide. It is not at all difficult to adapt this Hellenistic framework to Christian political ideology. The Christian God simply replaced the pagan supreme deity as the ruler of the universe; as such he was regarded as the source of imperial power. The Stoic Logos had already been adapted in the Gospel of St. John to designate Christ as the Word (Logos), the second person of the Holy Trinity. The Logos of the Christian Trinity was equated with the comes, the emperor’s divine companion who gives him both power and responsibility.
Eusebius next resorted to the Platonic world of ideas to establish the proper relationship between the Kingdom of Heaven and the earthly kingdom and between the King of Heaven and the earthly king. Thus the earthly kingdom is but the mirror-reflection of the Platonic reality, which is the divine kingdom in heaven. The function of the Christian emperor is to prepare his subjects on earth and then to lead them into the Kingdom of God. “And so adorned with the image of the kingdom of heaven, Constantine looks up at the archetypal form [in heaven] and governs those below in accord with it. He is strong in his conformity to the divine monarchical power,” writes Eusebius in his Oration.
Eusebius then goes on to delineate the emperor's function from the perspective of the divine. God, he maintains, directly teaches and discloses to Constantine the mysteries of His sacred truths and secret wonders. It is true that God alone is perfectly good and strong, “the begetter of justice, the father of reason and wisdom, the spring of light and life, the treasurer of truth and virtue, and the author of kingship itself and of all rule and authority.” Since the emperor, however, is the mediator between God and man, he possesses all these virtues automatically. Eusebius stresses that the emperor “moulds his soul by means of royal virtues to a representation of the kingdom above.” What Eusebius is saying is that the emperor, as vicegerent of God, has universal power and universal responsibility. The earthly ruler, beloved of God, “bears the image of the highest kingdom. By imitation of the greater king [God], he steers in a straight course all things on earth.” Almost a Messiah figure, the emperor singlehandedly defeats the earthly forces of evil. The emperor is the elect of God because the empire represents the divine plan, God’s ultimate victory over evil. Theoretically, the Christian empire is coextensive with the inhabited civilized world (oikoumene); outside the empire there is nothing but disorder, chaos and barbarism.
The Kingdom of Heaven, like its counterpart on earth, is governed by the supreme monarch, God “the Almighty King,” and has a pyramidal, hierarchical structure. Outside it is the chaotic domain of Satan and his demons. Monarchy, consequently, is the ideal form of government. A democratic government on earth would be as unthinkable as a heaven governed not by God but by a parliament of angels. Democracy, in these terms, represents anarchy and chaos.
ATTRIBUTES OF THE CHRISTIAN EMPEROR
After the extinction of the Theodosian dynasty in the fifth century a religious coronation was introduced to enhance the prestige and legitimacy of the emperor. The first instance of a religious coronation recorded is that of Leo I (457-474) who was crowned by the patriarch of Constantinople in 457. Following the outdoor military ceremony during which Leo received the diadem from the hands of a representative of the army, the new emperor proceeded to the Great Church of Hagia Sophia (Holy Wisdom). Taking the diadem from his head he placed it on the holy altar; after a passage from the Holy Gospels was read, Patriarch Anatolios (449-458) placed the diadem back on the emperor’s head. In Byzantium, it should be noted, ecclesiastical consecration, a usage that became sanctified by custom, followed the assumption of full imperial power by the emperor.
Whatever the means of access to the throne, whether by election, association or revolution, the emperor was elevated infinitely higher than simple mortals. In acclaiming him the army, senate and people were merely ratifying the divine will; the emperor was “crowned by God.” This superhuman relationship of the emperor to God, his divine election, is no better expressed than in the preface of the De administrando imperio, written by the Emperor Constantine VII (913-959) for the instruction of his son Romanos II (959-963):
And the Almighty shall cover thee with His shield... .Thy throne shall be as the sun before Him, and His eyes shall be looking towards thee, and naught of harm shall touch thee, for He hath chosen thee and set thee apart from thy mother’s womb, and hath given unto thee His rule as unto one excellent above all men, and hath set thee as a refuge upon a hill and a statue of gold upon a high place, and as a city upon a mountain hath He raised thee up, that the nations may bring to thee their gifts and thou mayest be adored of them that dwell upon the earth.
The Byzantine conviction of the interpenetration between heaven and earth was so profound that acclamations frequently stated that the emperor reigned jointly with Christ. Also the emperor occupied only the left side of his throne, as the right was left empty for Christ, his co-ruler. Because of the emperor's unique relation to God, with whom he shared the government of the world, the emperor was described as sacred and divine. Everything connected with his person partook of this sanctity—the palace, his vestments, the imperial properties. Those persons who received gifts or insignia of office from the emperor had to do so with covered hands (a custom borrowed from the Persians) to avoid imperial contact with the hands of ordinary mortals. With Diocletian it became obligatory for all persons approaching the sacred emperor to kneel in adoration before him. It was Justinian, however, who insisted on prostration and kissing of the feet. At the same time he required for himself the title of despot which denoted the relationship of master to slave as did the physical act of prostration.
It was Emperor Heraclius (610-641) who first adopted officially the Greek title of basileus to designate emperor. The only other sovereign who was allowed the title of basileus was the king of Persia. However, after the Muslim conquest and the disappearance of the last Persian monarch, the Byzantine emperor remained the only basileus on earth. In general the Byzantine chancellory refused to use this form of address for any foreign prince, preferring in its relations with the West to use the neutral title rex while all other tulers were styled archon or governor. The Greek titles basileus, despot and autokrator all point to the autocratic and absolute power of the Byzantine monarch.
Constantine the Great called himself the “bishop (episkopos ) of those outside the Church” while other emperors were honored with the liturgical titles of priest and high-priest. Indeed, the Byzantine emperor had certain liturgical privileges. He had the right to enter the sanctuary reserved for the clergy and for those in minor orders; he could preach to the congregation; he gave himself communion in the manner of the clergy; he censed the icons and the congregation with the censer and blessed the congregation with the three-candle and two-candle candelabra (symbolizing the Holy Trinity and the two natures of Christ), a prerogative of bishops. However, it must be remembered that the emperor was not ordained to the priesthood. Only priests and bishops could celebrate the sacraments of the church. The boundary was clearly defined and could not be crossed: although the emperor was not an ordinary layman, he was also not a priest.
Thus the conviction in the interpenetration of the heavenly and earthly kingdoms, the joint reign of emperor and Christ, the indivisibility of empire and church assured the emperor that in his struggle to defend the Christian state against the barbarian enemy divine assistance would never be lacking. On his way to give battle to the usurper Maxentius in 312 at the Milvian bridge, Constantine was promised victory as the result of a divine vision. Eusebius, who records this famous incident in the Life of Constantine, assures us that he heard this story from Constantine himself.
He said that about noon, when the day was already beginning to decline, he saw with his own eyes the trophy of a cross of light in the heavens against the sun and bearing the inscription “In this sign conquer.” At this sight he himself was struck with amazement, and his whole army also, which followed him on this expedition, and witnessed the miracle.
This is a most revealing passage. The cross is called a trophy, a monument or military symbol of victory, and the emperor is promised victory if he uses the symbol of the cross. Constantine also told Eusebius that the same night of the miraculous vision “the Christ of God appeared to him with the same sign he had seen in the heavens, and commanded him to make a likeness of that sign which he had seen in the heavens, and to use it as a safeguard in all engagements with his enemies.” The cross was called the victory-giving symbol. If the cross symbolized Christ’s victory over death, the prince of darkness, it also signified the emperor’s triumph over the barbarian enemy. This idea was also conveyed in the many representations of the emperor showing him holding the orb of the earth surmounted by the cross.
By Christianizing another pagan principle the Byzantine emperor was to secure added assistance on his military campaigns. The pagan Roman emperor was always accompanied by Victoria, the goddess of victory; Victoria was merged with Venus Victrix. These feminine principles were easily replaced by the Virgin Mary, the Mother of God (Theotokos), who became associated with the imperial victories. In 610 when Heraclius appeared before Constantinople at the head of a fleet determined to overthrow the tyrant Phokas (602-610), he had attached icons of the Virgin Mary to the masts of his warships. Henceforth, the Theotokos became the patroness and protectress of Constantinople.
All subsequent victories were attributed to the Blessed Virgin who, it was believed, would never abandon the city of Constantinople in which she actually dwelled. Together with the cross, the holy icon of Theotokos called the Hodegetria, meaning the leader, became the trophy of victory par excellence. Thus the pagan Roman belief in the emperor’s divinely predestined victory was Christianized and remained an essential aspect of the imperial mystique.
When the Emperor John II Komnenos (1118-1143) returned victorious from his campaign in Anatolia against the Turks, he decided to celebrate his victory with a triumphal procession into Constantinople. He ordered a chariot fashioned of silver and embellished with semiprecious stones. This historic event is described by Byzantine historian Niketas Choniates.
On the day that the triumph was to take place, purple-bordered and gold-embroidered veils adorned the boulevards. Nor were the likenesses of Christ and the saints, as many as were embroidered by the hand of the loom on frames which, as it was said, appeared to be alive and not inwoven, missing from these places. These things were worthy of wonderment as were the wooden scaffolds and platforms set up on either side of the triumphal way. The regions of the city, prepared in this fashion, extended from the eastern gates of the city to the Great Palace itself. And indeed the exquisitely fashioned chariot was pulled by four beautifully maned horses whiter than snow. Having given up his own place on the chariot the Emperor mounted on it the icon of the Theometor [God’s Mother] in which he rejoiced ...and ascribing the victories to her as the unconquerable general, and having given the reins to be held by his most powerful officials. And having directed his relatives to attend the chariot on either side, he himself preceded, holding in his hands the Crucifix and travelling over the route on foot; and having entered the Church named for the Wisdom of God [Hagia Sophia] and having rendered thanks to the Lord God before all the people for his achievements he thus directed himself to the palace.
The festivities were then continued with chariot races in the hippodrome. The hippodrome was actually the center of the imperial cult. All public life, in fact, gravitated here. The Blue, Green, White and Red stable factions, called demes and representing the popular parties of Byzantium up to the ninth century, were officially incorporated by the imperial government to participate in all state ceremonies, and their stations and functions in the hippodrome were spelled out in detail in the Byzantine ceremonial code. In the ritual of the imperial cult they chanted special hymns on behalf of the emperors.
Whether it was an audience for foreign ambassadors, a procession to the Great Church of Hagia Sophia and the celebration of a special feast day, a magnificent banquet given in the Hall of the Nineteen Couches or games in the hippodrome, every gesture of the emperor was minutely prescribed, as were those of all who participated.
The intricate, complex, colorful and magnificent court ritual was the externalization of the imperial majesty and served as a propaganda mechanism. The emperor's daily life had to conform to the strictest regimen. “For just as a body that is not elegantly formed but consists of disproportionate members may be justly described as disorderly, so the emperor's conduct, if it is not carried out in an orderly fashion, will not differ at all from the life of a private individual,” writes the Emperor Constantine VII in the preface of the De ceremoniis (Le Livre des Cérémonies), his compilation of court ceremonies. By collecting the proper rituals, he goes on, we may “represent the harmonious motion of the Creator’s universe; the imperial dignity will appear nobler to the subjects and therefore sweeter and more admirable.”
There was a prescribed ceremony for every important event in the life of the imperial family from birth to death. For example, on the birth of a son and successor in the purple chamber of accouchement, special prayers of thanksgiving were offered. Eight days later, when the newborn infant received his Christian name, the imperial couple sent blossoming branches to the nobility as a special invitation to attend the solemn occasion and the banquet that followed.
The sanctuary of the imperial cult, of course, was the sacred palace. The main audience hall, the Chrysotriklinos, was built exactly like a church, with a cupola over a cross-in-square foundation. Instead of an altar in the east end (apse), there stood the emperor's throne. In the case of an audience meant to impress and awe foreign ambassadors, the emperor was enthroned under a canopy like the ciborium standing over the altar of a church. It is worthwhile to cite here the description of such an audience granted to Liutprant, Bishop of Cremona (described in his Works), who came to Constantinople in 949 as the envoy of Berengar II:
Before the emperor’s seat stood a tree, made of bronze gilded over, whose branches were filled with birds, also made of gilded bronze, which uttered different cries, each according to its varying species. The throne itself was so marvellously fashioned that at one moment it seemed a low structure, and at another it rose high into the air. It was of immense size and guarded by lions, made either of bronze or of wood covered over with gold, who beat the ground with their tails and gave a dreadful roar with open mouth and quivering tongue. Leaning upon the shoulders of two eunuchs I was brought into the emperor’s presence. At my approach the lions began to roar and the birds to cry out, each according to its kind.... So after I had three times made obeisance to the emperor with my face upon the ground, I lifted my head, and behold! the man whom just before I had seen sitting on a moderately elevated seat had now changed his raiment and was sitting on the level of the ceiling.
The splendor and opulence of the imperial palaces, the awesome imperial! audience, the colorful processions and impressive and complicated church ceremonies, the hippodrome games, the lavish imperial banquets, the exquisite beauty of official costumes and the refinement and sophistication of Byzantine etiquette all had but one end: to demonstrate the superiority of Byzantine civilization to the rest of the world, to show that the emperor, God’s vicegerent on earth and the sun around which Byzantium revolved, was far superior to all the other kings and rulers of the civilized world.
THE PROBLEM OF CAESAROPAPISM
As a Christian emperor Constantine believed himself responsible for keeping the peace within the church; perversion in doctrine might lead to God’s wrath and result in the physical ruin of the state. This was a problem with which the pagan emperors never had to deal.
Christians were periodically persecuted by pagan authorities, but this was because their refusal to accept the political ideology of the Roman state by recognizing the emperor as a deity was construed to be an act of treason. The revolutionary introduction of the concept of orthodoxy, the insistence on the “correct” and “true” faith as opposed to all other “corrupt” faiths made the state vulnerable to the disrupting ills of heresy. Although the Roman pantheon had no difficulty welcoming and including one more god, the exclusion of all deities but the one true God created new problems and required a radically new attitude toward the world and man’s role in history.
Constantine was soon made aware of the new ramifications of his function as a Christian emperor. In a letter concerning the Donatist controversy in North Africa, a dispute over the validity of the sacraments of those clerics who had surrendered church books and holy vessels to the pagan authorities during the persecutions, Constantine wrote:
And all these quarrels and wrangles might well rouse God not only against the human race, but also against me, to whose rule and care his holy will has committed all earthly things. ...I shall never rest content or expect prosperity and happiness from the Almighty’s merciful power until I feel that all men offer to the All Holy the right worship.
The pagan Roman emperor also had been both the chief religious functionary of the state (pontifex maximus) and the secular ruler, but there had been no question of a pagan church and pagan orthodox doctrine. The Constantinian Peace, however, brought with it a new dimension to the supreme responsibility of the emperor on earth. The Christian monarch, as Constantine clearly understood, was also responsible for the well-being of the Christian church; and the welfare of the church was viewed as inextricably bound to the destiny of the state.
Heretofore, Christian society had been alienated from the Roman state—at best ignored and at worst persecuted for treason. With Constantine's conversion, Christianity became the norm, a unity embracing all aspects of Greco-Roman civilization. The tables had been turned and paganism was on the defensive.
As vicegerent of God, if no longer a deity himself, Constantine looked upon his function vis-a-vis the church as comparable to that of the bishop; he was charged with the conversion of non-Christians in the empire. This new Christian political ideology was to have far-reaching consequences for the future development of churchstate relations. The point here is that the fourth-century church, emancipated and favored by the emperor, officially recognized his responsibility in church affairs. The Christian Roman empire was a unity, and no firm division between church and state was conceived. The church was bound by its great debt to the emperor and honored him for his great services to the Christian cause.
This brings us to one of the most controversial topics of medieval history. Some Western scholars, whose attitudes have been colored by their Latin, Anglo-Saxon and Germanic backgrounds, have accused the Byzantine emperors of being guilty of Caesaropapism. The term itself was coined in the West and discloses a special bias, implying that the Byzantine emperor exercised absolute control over the church, even in matters of doctrine. The claim that the Byzantine emperor was both Caesar and pope is misleading. No pope, in the course of Byzantine history, had the authority, outside an ecumenical council, to pronounce alone on dogma. When certain emperors did interfere in church affairs they did so because they conceived such action to be their prerogative as supreme ruler and vicegerent of God, and not because their authority usurped that of any pope. The foremost duty of the Byzantine emperor, as we have seen, was to lead his subjects to God and to guard the purity of the true faith.
It is undeniable that the emperor appointed and deposed patriarchs, altered the boundaries of ecclesiastical jurisdictions and legislated on behalf of good order and discipline concerning clerics, monks and church institutions. But could the emperor, on his own authority, pronounce on dogmatic truths? This alone is the crucial issue because the church accepted his power to do all the rest.
Dogma is based on what the Greek church calls Holy Tradition. Holy Tradition, as distinct from the many and varied local traditions, includes the Holy Scriptures, the authoritative theological writings of the great church fathers, and the elements of faith set down and formulated by the first seven ecumenical councils. In this crucial sphere of the formulation of dogma, it was not the emperor who was charged with this prerogative but the bishops in ecumenical councils under the infallible guidance and inspiration of the Holy Spirit. Even the despotic Justinian, when trying to formulate dogma on his own, was finally compelled to convoke the Fifth Ecumenical Council to confirm his pronouncements. “It has always been the practice of our orthodox and imperial forefathers,” he writes in a letter to the Ecumenical Council of 553, “to counter every heresy as it arose through the instrumentality of the most zealous priests assembled in councils and to keep the Holy Church of God in peace by sincere preaching of the true faith.” The authoritarian iconoclast emperors also felt the need to convoke councils (albeit packed ) to give the semblance of official sanction to their dogmatic views.
The first seven ecumenical councils, it must be understood, were convoked neither by the pope nor by the eastern patriarchs but by the Byzantine emperors. The emperor or his representative, in fact, presided over the proceedings, a usage inaugurated by Constantine himself. These councils of bishops were regarded as a kind of ecclesiastical senate, and the same procedure was applied to them as was followed in the Roman senate. It should be recalled that the emperor did not vote with the senators and that it was this limitation that saved the principle that the definition of faith, the formulation of dogma, is solely the prerogative of bishops. The emperors, however, signed the decisions of the councils and proclaimed them law binding on every Christian throughout the empire. Again, the validity of the ecumenical council depended upon the presence of the patriarchs of Rome, Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch and Jerusalem or their representatives.
The emperor, it is true, might exercise undue influence and pressure on the bishops who sat in the church councils. But the views of the majority of both clergy and laity could not be defied by even the most authoritarian emperor, and more than once the will of the people overturned the decisions reached by the bishops. When at the end of the empire’s life two emperors packed the Council of Lyons in 1274 and the Council of Ferrara-Florence in 1439 with Greek bishops who agreed to vote on union with Rome, the masses in Byzantium, both churchmen and laymen, refused to accept the councils’ decisions subjecting the Greek church to the papacy. In the fifteenth century the true defenders of the faith, the repository of orthodoxy, proved to be neither the emperor nor the bishops, but the laity and the clergy, who together constituted the conscience of the church. The emperor, we may conclude, could not formulate dogma ex cathedra.
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